t attacks I have render me unfit
to go to town and sit in judgment on that pack of silly women who rush
to consult me whenever they have a headache or an erring husband. I
think that very soon I ought to retire. I've done sufficient hard work
all the years since I was a 'locum' down in Oxfordshire. I'm worn
out."

"Oh, no," I said. "You mustn't retire yet. If you did, the profession
would lose one of its most brilliant men."

"Enough of compliments," he snapped, turning wearily on his pillow.
"I'm sick to death of it all. Better to retire while I have fame, than
to outlive it. When I give up you will step into my shoes, Boyd, and
it will be a good thing for you."

Such a suggestion was quite unexpected. I had never dreamed that he
contemplated handing over his practice to me. Certainly it would be a
good thing for me if he did. It would give me a chance such as few men
ever had. True, I was well known to his patients and had worked hard
in his interests, but that he intended to hand his practice over to me
I had never contemplated. Hence I thanked him most heartily. Yes, Sir
Bernard had been my benefactor always.

"All the women know you," he went on in his snappish way. "You are the
only man to take my place. They would come to you; but not to a new
man. All I can hope is that they won't bore you with their domestic
troubles--as they have done me," and he smiled.

"Oh," I said. "More than once I, too, have been compelled to listen to
the domestic secrets of certain households. It really is astonishing
what a woman will tell her doctor, even though he may be young."

The old man laughed again.

"Ah!" he sighed. "You don't know women as I know them, Boyd. You've
got your experience to gain. Then you'll hold them in abhorrence--just
as I do. They call me a woman-hater," he grunted. "Perhaps I am--for
I've had cause to hold the feminine mind and the feminine passion
equally in contempt."

"Well," I laughed, "there's not a man in London who is more qualified
to speak from personal experience than yourself. So I anticipate a
pretty rough time when I've had years of it, as you have."

"And yet you want to marry!" he snapped, looking me straight in the
face. "Of course, you love Ethelwynn Mivart. Every man at your age
loves. It is a malady that occurs in the 'teens and declines in the
thirties. I should have thought that your affection of the heart had
been about cured. It is surely time it was."

"It is true that